Sunday, September 29, 2013

So. Happy day
today! I’ve been a missionary for exactly six months. At about 7
o’clock tonight. Crazy. And yesterday, I am 19.5 years old.
Everyone here really considers me the baby because I’m the first 19 year
old that’s been in Recreo.

Sounds like
things went relatively well for Justin’s chemo. Glad to hear that...so
far. I’m praying for yall everyday don’t forget that. it sounds
like he’s keeping really positive too and I wanna hear some of these jokes!
It’s still crazy to me and doesn’t really sink in until I see the
pictures. But I know that this will only make him stronger!

As for the
mission...last week on pday, we played soccer in Con con. IT WAS AWESOME.
I got a gnarly bruise shaped really weird, so that was pretty cool.
Love playing soccer with those elders. Our district leader is crazy
good too. We also read our patriarchal blessings in a park and I enjoyed
it because it was really peaceful, and I actually felt like I could breathe and
have time to myself. That doesn’t happen much as a missionary (except
unless you dream well. haha.). also, of all places, Chile has dunkin
donuts! we ate some of those too. oh my goodness how I have
forgotten the reality of how delicious a donut is. Most of the pastries
here are deceiving. they look like heaven and then it turns out to be
bread with chocolate, or bread with manjar. surprise! lol. not the
same. but it’s all good.

We kicked the
ball over the fence and into the street, but luckily, the crazy guy from the
coca cola decided to risk his life and jump out of his truck to save our ball
from certain death. what a gem. a few cars were backed up behind
him, honking their horns at him to go too. took him a few tries but he kicked
that ball over the fence! gotta love Chile.

The next day I
woke up and was super sore from playing soccer. It was funny because in
district meeting, all the elders said they were sore too and I seriously had to
waddle Tuesday morning to work.

We went to
Jumbo. It’s like Wal-Mart but a little bit less walmartish and more like
a giant grocery store. when we were walking last week, I said to my
companion, " remember when we used to have sams club and Safeway?"
hehehe. you would never see that in recreo. jumbo has the best granola on
this planet! ok...I can probably make granola better than it, but.....
(message here. I eat granola for breakfast.). people at jumbo are nice too. the
lady bagging our groceries before we left said, "why is it that you girls
are always pretty?". cute little ladies here make me smile.

LOL!!!! okay so
we went to hermano Raves and helped iron a few shirts for him. guess what
was on TV???? he was watching nacho libre...lol. aight I didn’t watch it don’t
worry, but I did over hear a little bit of it. let’s just say nacho libre
in Spanish is probably hilarious and it’s all we quoted in the mtc. (that and
pitch perfect).

I was wearing
my csu sweatshirt in vina after we played soccer and some random guy came up
and said, "no way you go to csu?" I said, "no I’m just from fort
Collins. we are missionaries." he said, "whoa cuz I go to
cu!". it was super random. and his name was Jason. nice guy.
(baddddd judge of character! lol lol quote from the Grinch.)

We’ve
been speaking in Spanish like almost always lately. it’s awesome and
helping us a lot. it kinda started with intercambios with latinas.
we were so used to it; we just decided to keep speaking it. yay!
I can understand other accents, but Chileans are so dang fast. hard to
keep up there my friends.

aight....so
again. familia rojas didn’t come to church! hardest thing here for us is
getting people to come. like seriously just come! you tell us you’re coming and
we have a ride for you and everything come come come!!! ok overreaction, but
really. just come to church. we taught them the plan of salvation
when we were on intercambios and they understood it really well I think.
still working with them though.

Ooo our lights
went out this week. one night we were walking up the stairs to our apartment and
a lady said, "no hay luz." so the electricity was out or something
and it was time to pull out the emergency flashlights. sweeeeet.

abuelita
martita wants me to tell you all that we are in good hands and that we have a Chilean
grandmother. I love that woman. she also sends you her love.

Milena
returned! our investigador from before. She wants to come to church
and we are going to continue working with her.

we went on Saturday
to a less active member named Nancy. she’s an older woman, has about 80
years or so and hasn’t been to church in a long time. we talked to her about
the temple. we invited her to church and offered to accompany her. she
said she would go alone, and the next day, we looked down the street and saw
her and Hermana doris coming to church! it made me happy. we had some
menos activos there yesterday and maybe the family didn’t come, but menos
activos there was an awesome sight!

During
intercambios, we visited a man named jose. we found out that his mom had
died 15 days before and he was really sad. We taught him the plan of
salvation and were about to close with a prayer when we asked if there was
anything we could pray for him for. he immediately started crying and
shaking and it was really sad. like he was holding it all in. He
wanted us to come back next week which we are going to do for sure. he can’t
walk very well, and his sister doesn’t really like the missionaries. but
it was a cool experience to meet him.

ooo! ok this
was exciting...sorta...we went with Doris to teach la familia rojas.
outside we saw this short little drunk guy just kinda stalling in front
of their house. I asked him, “do you want to be happy?" and we
started conversing with him about the gospel. he said he feels alone and
needs help and wants to be better. he was holding a beer can and swaying
on the spot, and got so frustrated with himself that his face twisted up and he
threw the beer as hard as he could into a nearby field. lol. thought it
was coming for me at first. then we invited him to church and he said he
would come about 40 times. on our way down, we saw him on the
stairs...sure enough he remembered 10 minutes later. haha but I guess it was
hard to remember that till the next morning because he didn’t come. sad day.
haha. love those drunks.

I’m trying to use more
visuals in my teaching because it’s easier to explain and it’s easier to learn
with them I think. I made a few this week.

language is good. I
like speaking Spanish!

love you all. keep me
posted with Justin.

also....GROUNDBREAKING
ALRREADY??? ok flipping awesome. psyched!

Hermana Emily Hanks

we live on camino real.

story. our mamita put some jeans that werent ours in our laundry and i just had to try them on. it was all too tempting. oh...and may the wolves be with you. wolfiest wishes from chile.

First of all, I’m
glad everything with Justin sounds like its going ok so far. I love the
pictures too! That is awesome. I’ve been praying and will continue
to pray for Justin. (In the words of matt: big boy.)

Second off.
I did not get transferred!! Everybody said, "Oh Hermana hanks you’ve
been here, you’ll probably get transferred." but nope! We were both
surprised hearing we were both staying one more. People were happy to
hear and see that we are sticking around another 6 weeks so that’s good!
We are stoked because we will be here for Independence Day on 18 de
septiembre.

Hermana
Schrader and I are super excited for this cambio! Every day is a learning
experience. Even every transfer. I kind of have goals in mind for
each transfer. For example, I really wanted to get better with the
language last transfer. I feel like it improved a lot and I tried to work
at it a lot more. I’ve almost finished the book of Mormon reading out
loud! About 90 pages to go. Sweeeeet.

I’ve been
thinking about goals for this transfer, and I want to learn to love people the
way the Savior did. Wave figured a lot out, how to make good use of our
time, speaking, teaching, etc., but actually listening and loving people is something
I’m going to try and be better at. I read in about it in PME this
morning. It’s awesome! 1 Corinthians 13. Super good.

So stories for
this week. Haha. We have decided living in a small town like Recreo
is like a video game. We see some of the same people every day. For
example, the friendly guy from the gas station who always says, "como
esta!" and is super enthusiastic. We love that guy! He says we
make his day whenever we see him. And he’s not a snake either so that’s a
plus. We also see Rosario each day almost. Trigger: we see a purple
jacket and white hat. Rosario. I sent a picture with her. We
see like the same people in the spot where we expect to see them each day if
you know what I mean.

One thing we
are sad about is that our district leader got transferred to the north at
transfers. He’s a zone leader now so that’s pretty sweet! He was so
cool though and we will miss him! He taught us a lot and got us really
animated for the work. He told us cool stories like how he got rocks
thrown at him one night for example. He will be missed.

I got to see my
mommy (in the mission world) last week! Hermana Ortega and Hermana Schrader’s
trainer, Hermana Garcia came and saw us before they went home. So good to
see them! Crazy they’re back home. Dang.

Funny story. That
crazy drunk with the poodle, he wears swoosh pants. (the pants that like
make a swoosh noise when you walk. lol). He’s nuts. He ran across
the street and I said, "you said you were going to come to church last
week! why didn’t you come!?" and he was like, "well..uh. my
brother was in town!". then I said, "hm...but this week right??"
he was like,"yes of course." crazy guy. guess he forgot.
again. hahaha. He asked what our first names were, and just to mess with him
(super drunk), when he asked me, I told him my name was, "shaneequa."
hard to hold back a laugh because he believed me and all. lol.

We
visited cute little blanca this week. Blanca is the little old lady I
sent a picture of a few weeks ago I think. She has Alzheimer’s, and her
daughter Irma takes care of her. Irma is in our ward. Every time we
are there, Blanca repeats every few minutes, "just whenever you want!
come to our house! you both are so pretty!" and it’s so
adorable. then when we leave, she watches us until we are out of site,
walking down the stare and waves to us as we walk back onto the main street.
it’s cool because Irma said Blanca doesn’t like it when other visitors
come and usually asks, "why are you here?" to others. cute little
lady.

haha. so
everyone here thinks Adele is a really good singer. why? well, you hear Adele
everywhere. I’m not saying she’s bad, but not such a fan after hearing
her all the time. sometimes we will accidentally catch ourselves singing
some Adele and its bad! I think the worst was yesterday in church, somebody’s
phone went off playing Adele during the closing prayer. I was trying to
hold back laughter and could tell Hermana Schrader was doing the same. lol.

We had zone
conference this week. I could actually understand it!! it was awesome.
Wave been trying to get people to progress...we can find people, but it’s
getting them to church that’s the problem here. I’ve been praying a lot
about how we can get people to progress here and the zone conference talked a
lot about it. It was really good!

Rojas family.
DIDNT COME TO CHURCH yesterday. it was sad. apparently somebody was
sick, but we are still going to work with them. it was a bummer!
but we will go see them tomorrow and hopefully some more this week. they need
to go. Francisco found a job, and they’ve been reading the book of Mormon,
so they’ve received some blessings and it’s been cool to see.

We have a
date for baptism with Francisco, the 14 year old....sort of. but I’ll write
more about that next week!

saw abuelita
martita last night. we were talking a little bit about the stars and
planets before and then shared alma 30:44 about the planets and the stars (alma
proving to korihor that he has all the proof there is a God before him). she
squealed in delight how cool that was because we had just been talking planets
and all. she wanted to finish the entire chapter. Her husband is
super active, but abuelita martita is not. she smokes too. haha. but she’s
coming little by little I think!

Well love you
all. keep me updated on Justin!

Chao.

Hermana Emily Hanks

aight this is our friend rosario. those apartments are similar to the ones we live in. Rosario, everytime we see her walking around (which is at least once a day haha) she says, "hola hola mijita como estan como estan??" Lol. we had to get a picture with her.